First Solar (FSLR) Jumps 14%

Shares of First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) are up almost 15% to $56.95 in morning trading Tuesday after analysts at Deutsche Bank (DB) upgraded the name to ‘Buy’ from ‘Hold’, raising their price target for the solar power company to $68 from $60. The move comes with an unusually high volume too with 9.4 million shares changing hands. It is currently at more than 3x, or approx. 770% higher its 3-month average volume. FSLR’s gains of over 7 points are also attributed to an announcement this morning that said the company is close to forming a joint YieldCo venture with SunPower (SPWR).

On valuation measures, First Solar, Inc. shares are currently priced at 21.38x this year’s forecasted earnings compared to the industry’s -65.51x earnings multiple. Ticker has a PEG and forward P/E ratio of (25.60) and 12.62, respectively. Price/sales for the same period is 1.58 while EPS is $2.66. Currently there are 5 analysts that rate FSLR a ‘Buy’, 6 rate it a ‘Hold’. 1 analyst rates it a ‘Sell’. FSLR has a median Wall Street price target of $59.00 with a high target of $83.00.

In the past 52 weeks, shares of Tempe, Arizona-based solar energy solutions provider have traded between a low of $39.18 and a high of $74.84 with the 50-day MA and 200-day MA located at $44.82 and $54.52 levels, respectively. Additionally, shares of FSLR trade at a P/E ratio of -25.60 and have a Relative Strength Index (RSI) and MACD indicator of 78.85 and +0.71, respectively.

FSLR currently prints a one year loss of 11.25%, and a year-to-date return of around 11.30%.

The chart below shows where the equity has traded over the last 52 weeks.